look what we found
in the dark
from the park
he was brought to our home
we will call him clark
here's his model shot. he came with some flowers we bought today. a benevolent gift from the tulip fairy! jeff said that he was sent to us that we may learn a great lesson. so far we've learned:
-snails are hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female organs. when they mate, they both become pregnant. some species can even reproduce asexually.
-snails' shells are very soft when they are born. they need calcium to harden it up, so they eat the egg they were in, as well as surrounding eggs. cannibals.
-for the same calcium need, commercial snail food has limestone in it.
-snails tongues have thousands of little hooks on them. to eat, they scrape their tongue along the leaf/fruit/limestone. for some reason it makes me think of an indian woman with a washboard.
anyway...that's clark. k, bye.
From the looks of it Clark is changing color. Correct me if wrong
ReplyDeleteno, it was just the flash from the camera. that would be cool though.
ReplyDeleteHe does not look like The Clark in Dr. Seuss's book. Must be another species. My kids collected big snails in Provo during a summer when Gordon was working on his degree there. The snails came with us on our way back to Idaho. We spent the day at Lagoon and returned to find escargot. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth!
ReplyDeleteWhen the boys were in elementary school we lived with Grandma S. in Riverside. Our job that first summer was to pull up her whole front yard of ice plant. It was a snail Nirvana. (I even used to pay Tuck 10 cents/snail in Hawaii!)Back to Riverside, we killed hundreds maybe thousands of snails. Uncle Michele visited once & told us that in Italy they eat those kind of snails. Where was Uncle Michele when we needed him!!!
ReplyDeleteWe found TONS of snails in our yard in Orem. Tyler and I would smash them all into a plastic cup and then pour salt on them. The first time we did it he cried because he didn't want to hurt them. After a few more times the foaming snail volcano was the highlight of his day!
ReplyDelete